Charles Frederic Ulrich (1858–1908) was a late nineteenth-century realist painter of portraits and genre scenes who spent much of his career in Europe. Born in New York, the son of a German émigré photographer and painter, he studied at the National Academy of Design and likely at the Cooper Union School of Art before entering the Royal Academy in Munich, where he trained under Ludwig von Löfftz and joined the circle of American artists around Frank Duveneck. Returning briefly to New York, Ulrich gained notice with The Wood Engraver (1882) and won the inaugural Thomas B. Clarke Prize in 1884 for In the Land of Promise. Clarke, a lace and linen manufacturer and leading collector of contemporary American art, became a key supporter. Ulrich soon settled permanently in Europe, living in the Netherlands, Venice, and later Berlin, where he exhibited widely and became associated with the Berlin Secession and Deutscher Künstlerbund before his death in 1908.
